St. Clair is a St. Cloud State associate professor of learning resources and former director of the Multicultural Resource Center, now serving as a visiting associate professor in the University of Minnesota's Department of American Indian Studies.

St. Clair's lecture about the Dakota people and their homelands coincides with the 150th anniversary of the U.S.-Dakota War, which resulted in the death or exile from Minnesota of most of the Dakota people.

Today more than 170,000 Dakota people live in U.S. communities and reservations, principally in Minnesota, South Dakota, North Dakota, Nebraska and Montana. Nine bands call Canada home, with most living in communities and reserves in Manitoba and Saskatchewan.

An enrolled member of the Lower Sioux Indian Community, St. Clair is Mdewakantonwan Dakota, one of four Dakota tribal divisions living in Minnesota in 1862.